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Our Work in Sweden and the World 2015

Civil Rights Defenders’ main objective is to defend people’s civil and political rights and to strengthen human rights defenders at risk. We are continuing to grow as an organisation and throughout 2015 we intensified our work globally.

In 2015, Civil Rights Defenders established a presence in Palo Alto, San Francisco, at the Nordic Innovation House. Our presence in Palo Alto is a significant step forward for our focus on innovation and fundraising.

In June we received a donation of nine million SEK from the Swedish PostcodeLottery, which enabled us to launch our Human Rights Innovation Initiative (HRII). The idea behind the initiative is to provide a cross-sectoral expert council with some of the specific challenges that human rights defenders face on a daily basis. As a result, we will be able to identify, as well as implement, solutions that will strengthen the global human rights work.

Natalia Project, the world’s first alarm and positioning system for human rights defenders at risk, did also grow rapidly in 2015. Throughout the year, 39 human rights defenders were launched as new participants in the project. The vast majority of them are active in Central Asia, where they document and address human rights violations such as cases of torture and enforced disappearances. When 2015 came to an end, Natalia Project included a total of 80 participants representing several regions, including the Western Balkans, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Russia and East Africa.